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[mercia]

did someone mention the dreaded T word (taste) ? - I hope there are higher principles involved than mere personal taste - or have I drifted onto the wrong thread

[MrGongGong]

"Front Room?"

Sitting Room ?

BUT definitely NOT a "lounge"
I don't live in an airport or a hotel (well not all the time)

[french frank]

But can coverage over the evenings of one weekend really be considered 'saturation'? You say there isn't extensive TV coverage of the Proms - but there's more than twice as much as there was at Glastonbury. And as for Total Immersions, there is a huge variety of music played at Glastonbury, so it's hardly the sort of immersion that we are familiar with on R3, with the focus on one composer. Five 4-5 hour Wagner operas over 7 evenings, which we have at this year's Proms - that's more like immersion.

Do I think the Glastonbury coverage is excessive? Yes, slightly, but not so much as to make a fuss about, particularly if you don't have a television and mainly listen to R3 where not a note of Glastonbury music could be heard.

That ignores the point I made: I said I wasn't complaining for just that reason. It's not 'making a fuss' - merely holding an opinion and responding to what you say each time because you hold another opinion: that's a discussion, not a fuss. I also consider the point about 'the Proms having more coverage' is not to the point: it's spread out over a leisurely two months.

In any case, as regards the Proms, a different situation pertains. As for 'completism', I would consider it a matter of critical decision not to play 'every note of the Proms', but to be editorially selective. But the Proms get the coverage because they are a BBC event, and as a broadcaster they might as well not put on a concert that isn't going to be broadcast somewhere. Overall, would it lose much as a festival if it started to become a little smaller? <shock, horror>

[teamsaint]

I don't
I hate having to avoid sport all the time
I like music of all kinds
we would do with MORE music of all kinds
don't fall for the nonsense of thinking that somehow its EITHER the Stones or Sibelius
I want both ................

Some of the Glastonbury things I saw was pants
The Stones were a bit lukewarm IMV (compare this to some of their other gigs on Youtube)
but Johnny Marr was great

Avoiding sport (mostly football) and its excesses isn't so easy in the modern world, but in truth , outside of the odd major competition there is precious little live sport on free to air.

According to somebody, the average age of a Glastonbury ticket buyer is 36.....not the BBC 3 demographic.

As Gongers rightly suggests, the real problem is that Arts coverage altogether on free to air is utterly dismal. It surely makes sense in popular music for the BBC to highlight Glasto (as probably the best festival, and reasonably diverse in its offering) and to milk it. I honestly didn't find the wall to wall coverage that was promised. In fact , from what I remember of the last few years, there seemed to be rather less choice on the red button.

[french frank]

did someone mention the dreaded T word (taste) ? - I hope there are higher principles involved than mere personal taste - or have I drifted onto the wrong thread

But matters of taste are involved. Preferring the music of the Proms to the music of Glastonbury, or vice versa, is a matter of taste. What principle could be involved?

[mercia]

sorry, misunderstanding

I thought that my mere personal taste for music [rather than spoken word] in the intervals of broadcast concerts offended some greater principle

I had concluded that taste was a dirty word - [see "interval" thread]

[french frank]

sorry, misunderstanding

I thought that my mere personal taste for music in the intervals of concerts instead of spoken word offended some greater principle

Both can apply. There is a principle that concerts have programmes of music which have been specially put together by someone; having someone else simply adding their choice of available music can run counter to the criteria involved in the original choice. Not to mention the fact that a concert interval has traditionally presented a break between two sections of music which can often demand hard concentration. It's not that one necessarily dislikes the music played in between, simply that one prefers to have a break to rest the concentration - or, as Floss said, to prepare in some way for the second half. Reasonable?

But whether you like jazz and hate classical, or the reverse, is a matter of differing tastes in music.

[teamsaint]

BBC1 broadcast 49 hours of Music and Arts programming in 2010.

[french frank]

BBC1 broadcast 49 hours of Music and Arts programming in 2010.

Music and Arts? Slightly less than one hour per week. Still, I suppose that's not what it's for ...

[teamsaint]

Music and Arts? Slightly less than one hour per week. Still, I suppose that's not what it's for ...

according to ever reliable Wiki.....

as you say (and as TwoGongs always asks) that isn't what it is FOR...apparently.

Odd when, as you pointed out, we are a nation of music junkies. A sad indictment of our priorities..at least of those running the BBC...

[aeolium]

That ignores the point I made: I said I wasn't complaining for just that reason. It's not 'making a fuss' - merely holding an opinion and responding to what you say each time because you hold another opinion: that's a discussion, not a fuss. I also consider the point about 'the Proms having more coverage' is not to the point: it's spread out over a leisurely two months.

Asking why there had to be acres of coverage of Glastonbury sounded like at least something of a complaint. Why isn't the point about the Proms having more coverage not relevant here? If the coverage proportions were reversed and the pop festival was getting more than twice as much TV coverage over 8 weeks you would surely be highlighting it as an example of the way the BBC sidelined classical music to concentrate on pop. But the statistics surely show that when it comes to music festivals, the BBC devotes more airtime to covering one classical music festival than it does to either pop/rock, world, jazz or folk - even though the first of these is unquestionably much more popular than classical. Isn't that more important as the bigger picture than the relatively few hours of TV coverage of Glastonbury on the mainstream BBC channels (BBC1 & 2)?

[french frank]

Asking why there had to be acres of coverage of Glastonbury sounded like at least something of a complaint. Why isn't the point about the Proms having more coverage not relevant here? If the coverage proportions were reversed and the pop festival was getting more than twice as much TV coverage over 8 weeks you would surely be highlighting it as an example of the way the BBC sidelined classical music to concentrate on pop. But the statistics surely show that when it comes to music festivals, the BBC devotes more airtime to covering one classical music festival than it does to either pop/rock, world, jazz or folk - even though the first of these is unquestionably much more popular than classical. Isn't that more important as the bigger picture than the relatively few hours of TV coverage of Glastonbury on the mainstream BBC channels (BBC1 & 2)?

The situation is different for the reasons I've just said in my previous post. And, as I said, even with Proms, I think less can be more.

[Petrushka]

Wandering a little off track (as if we haven't done so already), why can't the London and regional orchestras come together with the BBC as a joint venture and either set up their own channel (The Orchestra Channel, perhaps?) and broadcast selected concerts similar to the BPO Digital Concert Hall? This would involve some element of pay-per-view and sponsorship but I can live with that. Concert recordings could be sold to other countries via the BBC to help recoup costs.

Classical music needs to lose its complacency and get out there and build new audiences by the most modern means available to them. Fears that attendances in the hall will fall will prove unfounded.

Where are the modern day Henry Woods and Robert Newmans, the visionaries who made things happen?

Please feel free to pick any holes.

[teamsaint]

Wandering a little off track (as if we haven't done so already), why can't the London and regional orchestras come together with the BBC as a joint venture and either set up their own channel (The Orchestra Channel, perhaps?) and broadcast selected concerts similar to the BPO Digital Concert Hall. This would involve some element of pay-per-view and sponsorship but I can live with that. Concert recordings could sold to other countries via the BBC to help recoup costs.

Classical music needs to lose its complacency and get out there and build new audiences by the most modern means available to them. Fears that the attendances in the hall will fall will prove unfounded.

Where are the modern day Henry Woods and Robert Newmans, the visionaries who made things happen?

Absolutely, Pet. spot on. There is so much wasted potential, and I am sorry to say that much of it falls to very poor sales and marketing.

In addition to your excellent idea, the Proms " Brand"() is desperately under used.
Sadly, too much Arts marketing begins and ends with a glossy brochure, a nice piccie of a conductor,and a bit of hyperbole. Actually selling seems to be a bit too..er..whats the word....well, you know what I mean.

There is a music and celebrity hungry world out there.......

[jayne lee wilson]

Wandering a little off track (as if we haven't done so already), why can't the London and regional orchestras come together with the BBC as a joint venture and either set up their own channel (The Orchestra Channel, perhaps?) and broadcast selected concerts similar to the BPO Digital Concert Hall? This would involve some element of pay-per-view and sponsorship but I can live with that. Concert recordings could be sold to other countries via the BBC to help recoup costs.

Classical music needs to lose its complacency and get out there and build new audiences by the most modern means available to them. Fears that attendances in the hall will fall will prove unfounded.

Where are the modern day Henry Woods and Robert Newmans, the visionaries who made things happen?

Please feel free to pick any holes.

Yes. I've often wondered about this a propos the London Orchestras - Concert Classics, Live in Concert etc... my only worry would be (surprise!) the SQ. If they chose 320 kbps AAC as minimum (as R3 is now) great. Anything below that... tends to mean that the better the system the more you hear the flaws. I finally gave up on Berlin DCH because of the restriction to 256 kbps (correspondance with Christoph Franke suggests that he would love to upgrade it - if only Broadband was good enough worldwide). 256 might be just OK for Bartok, Lutoslawski etc., but massed orchestral strings a la Schumann and Brahms... not so much. Always those strings that give it away!

But the more obvious danger would be uniformity of repertoire, lack of adventure etc. if you have to profit on tight margins, it is indeed Lutoslawski and Bartok who get left out, not just Dutilleux, Berio, or heaven forfend Harry Birtwistle (a Grand-Pere terrible now?). And as for new music?

And that's why we need PBS, as it always was. To serve minority and quality yes, but most of all - To give the audience something they didn't know they wanted.